I am serving a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Brazil, Porto Alegre North Mission. I post on this blog every week, so check it out to hear about my life as a missionary!

Monday, February 23, 2015

Week 25

Because of the holiday Carnaval, the beginning of the week started off slow. Especially on Tuesday we were hard pressed to find anyone in the streets and in their houses. For small towns like Vera Cruz, any major holiday shuts the whole place down. It was quite an interesting feeling being the only ones walking down the streets, almost as if it were a long abandoned ghost town. However, the next day everyone returened from their vacations and everything was back to normal.

The week continued to be slower than usual due to a lot of rain, sometimes raining for 2 days in a row. Having grown up in zero percent humidity, it was quite different to experience a time when nothing dried. We´d wake up in the morning and our clothes would still be damp from the previous day of work.

We had a funny experience one day as we were answering some questions about missionary work from some of our investigators. They´d already asked about various things such as communicating with family, if we could play soccer, if we could wear regular clothes, etc. The answer to the majority of these questions was that we could on Moday, Our Preparation Day. We were with a young man (a member of the branch here) that had a hard time not talking and so they learned that we also don´t hug the opposite gender while seving these 2 years. To that one of the young women sincerely asked, "But you guys can do that too on Mondays right?" Despite trying our hardest to contain ourselves we all burst out laughing! We explained to them that no, not even on Monday can we hug haha.

Yesterday we totally forgot about Daylight Savings Time and so we showed up at the chapel an hour early. After waiting around we thought that maybe church had been cancelled somehow. It was really odd because we didn´t hear anything from the people the week before, mentioning the change in time. Despite our confusion, we were able to bring our investigators to church. Maria and her soon-to-be husband were all ready waiting for us to pass by when we went to pick them up. That was the easiest I`ve ever had it getting people to church so far!

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